Premier SHC: No complaints with outcome from Midleton manager Micheál Keohane

Midleton manager Micheál Keohane couldn’t fault his side for effort but acknowledged that they were beaten by a better team on the day.

While a six-point half-time deficit was cut to four on more than one occasion, they Magpies couldn’t get any closer to Sarsfields.

“You always feel if you can get it to maybe three or two points that we'd be able to give it a bit of a rattle,” Keohane said, “but we just couldn't quite get that close.

“To be fair, we had a few wides, they had a couple of wides as well, they were just a much better team than us in the day. We made a lot of mistakes early on – we got the ball into good positions early in the first half, managed to find ourselves three and four points and then five points down all of a sudden.

“You kind of can't really give them that run, especially when you're creating chances. It's very different if they just get a purple patch because that happens but we just didn't convert those chances early.”

Midleton’s cause would of course have been helped had they been able to field Eoin Moloney and Conor Lehane, both ruled out with Achilles injuries, but equally Keohane didn’t wish to make excuses.

“They're two of our best players and they're two of our best characters as well, they're incredible men,” he said.

“Would really prefer to have them playing? Absolutely, but Sars were missing a couple of fellas as well, fellas that they had the last couple of years too.

“I think, all credit to them, they're a top team and just, we just weren't good enough today.”

Despite never really managing to get on top, Midleton continued to press and Keohane had nothing but praise from that point of view, especially considering the difficult year the club had with the losses of Darragh McCarthy and Ger Fitzgerald.

“They worked fierce hard,” he said.

“You could see in the first half that the workrate and the tackle-count and all that kind of stuff was really good and in the second half I'd be surprised if it wasn't higher again so, there's never a doubt about work and effort, they put absolutely and utterly everything into it.

“It probably is an emotional time for them as well, knowing what they're trying to do it for, maybe that plays a part in it as well.

“But they've been incredible all year, they're, a fantastic group of lads and I’m just really disappointed for them.”